Friday, March 16, 2012

*edit 30/03/2014* It took over two years, but some miserable fuck at Universal Music Group finally took it upon himself to have this track removed from Soundcloud. Not the end of the world, but annoying. The video's still up at the moment, and a 320k mp3 can be downloaded from this link here... Makes you pine for the the good old days of EMI, eh? And I notice there's been no online outcry over this, not even an solitary email of condolence... perhaps only people into shitty tedious over-hyped 'hip hop m@$hups' do that sort of thing? Anyway, I'm not bitter or anything...*cough*

So after saying I don't 'do bootlegs' anymore, I gone and done another one. I'm not setting out to make a habit of this, it's just that some nice source material came my way and I had a couple of evenings to kill. I don't think I need to say much else about this, really... it's all in the title and the artwork. Suffice to say, I'm of the opinion that if anyone else had attempted this, it would have been a disaster. As it is, I think it's come out pretty jolly well.

Could this be the one which finally gets me appreciated and blogged about with 25,000 plays and a mention in Uncut/Mojo/Old Fart Rocker Monthly and all that sort of stuff, after 10 long years of trying? Yeah, dream on... Anyway, find a decent stereo system to play this on, and turn the volume control up all the bloody way. Please let me know in some way if it tickles your rock buds.

Monday, March 12, 2012

The keen brains may have spotted the fact that these days I don't really do 'bootlegs', or 'm*sh-ups' if you really must use that horrific term (now used in an advert starring Jennifer Saunders, for some revolting sounding chocolate and cheese snack). Many will know I can bang on at length about how what was an interesting art form has become something for the mildly talentless and easily pleased. However, occasionally I do get an idea which I just have to try out. Usually they don't turn out well enough to finish, let alone foist on the general public... or maybe they're too good for the likes of people who think a Nintendo-esque version of a Smiths song is really good.

Anyway, here's something I did, which I think has come out pretty well. It's sort of an attempt to put together a new West Midlands supergroup (with two additional members from the South East), despite three of 'em having tragically left this planet way too early. You'll probably be familiar with the mighty 'Ramble On', from Led Zeppelin's second album. You may not be quite so familiar with Traffic's 'John Barleycorn Must Die', but you should be. Here they are together.

The band: Steve Winwood - Acoustic Guitar, Jim Capaldi - Percussion, Chris Wood - Flute, Robert Plant - Vocals, John Bonham - Drums, Jimmy Page - Electric Guitar, John Paul Jones - Bass Guitar. If you like it, do please spread it around. If you don't, there's an inexplicably popular, Nintendo-esque version of a Smiths song floating around which you might think is really good.

*edit* - Soundcloud download limit busted (that doesn't happen very often around here), so the best I can offer is a Mediafire link for a 320k mp3 version: DOWNLOAD